The Eyes Have It: How Butterflies Navigate to Suitable Habitat
Do butterflies find suitable habitat through vision or via other senses? The results of a new study were easy to see: Butterflies with flash-induced blindness consistently failed to navigate to target habitat that unaffected butterflies could readily find.
A Little Bit of Spit and a Whole Lot of Patience: What It Takes to Produce a Butterfly Field Guide
Sebastián Mena of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama collected and photographed 120 butterfly species for a guidebook he co-authored about Panama’s Pipeline Road Trail. Find out what Mena says goes into researching, writing, and designing an insect field guide.
Butterfly Pupae Make Sounds In Never-Before-Known Ways
New research explores how pupae of certain butterfly species make a "twittering" noise—via a wiggling movement that triggers sound from tiny structures in the membranes between their abdominal segments.
Do Managed Burns in Grasslands Benefit Butterflies?
Though under-used, prescribed fire can reinstate natural disturbance regimes in the North American Great Plains. The Range Science program at North Dakota State University is studying how this practice affects the local ecosystem, including its impact on pollinators such as butterflies.